Monday, October 06, 2008

Secrets of Magic

So the other day I went with my wife to pick up son bookdave at the Public Library where he hangs out after school and what did I stumble on but a Library book sale! Always a good place to find some bargains! Even at prices ranging from 25 cents to a dollar, however, pickings were slim. The wife found three history hardcovers, the boy found some scary teen books and I found nothing...until...this!SECRETS OF MAGIC is a 1973 paperback edition of a 1967 book by THE SHADOW'S creator, Walter B. Gibson! Behind this weird, quasi-psychedelic cover is page after page that does the unthinkable--explaining every major stage and traditional magician illusion up to that point in simple, easy to understand terms. Nothing about this book says it's a kids book but it has that look of all those magazine-sized educational kids books one always used to find in department stores in the sixties. Gibson, as I recall, was an illusionist himself along with being a pulp writer so he probably didn't even have to do much research for a book like this one. In fact, Wikipedia points out that the prolific author wrote more than a hundred books on magic! Here at my Library, we now have...one.

1 comment:

that's cool...i'd be happy to find a book showing how to do some decent card or slight of hand tricks that didn't require years of practice or hours of preparation or 17 different decks or stupid ones that need tape and string and such...

About Me

First published in 1968 (I was 9!), I have been writing professionally part-time for more than two decades. I have been freelancing for various authors, editors and publishers for the past three years on the behind-the-scenes tasks of writing.